More Math: Counting Around the Circle and Using Manipulatives

 For months we have been sitting in a circle to practice counting.  At first we practiced counting by ones up and back.  Then by 2's, 5's and 10's.  This led to skip counting, going from 10's to 5's to 1's.  Very tricky business for some of us.  This was prep work for counting coins and learning about place value.

This past week we did 2 different count around the circle activities that helped us practice skip counting but also see patterns in place value.  The first time I gave each child one of these: 

The long is "ten", the cube is "one".  These are the base ten blocks we use.  

We practiced counting by tens and ones and we came up with a total number.  I scribed these numbers as we went along to show visually how the place value was changing. 
Then we counted the same pieces the other way around the circle, and finally we swapped pieces and counted again.

We discovered many things, including that our total sum was always the same regardless and we began to notice more patterns in place value.   The second time we did this activity I passed out dimes, nickels and pennies and we did the same process.  I think this is helping us learn place value in a fun and interactive way!

 In addition, as we counted the 3 different ways, I highlighted the movement on a number grid.  You can see the 3 different colors I used to show that we counted using different pathways but every time we ended with 113.  They loved this!  

Here are a few more pictures showing the crew using math manipulatives to help them solve problems.